SSAT Analogies

Prep School Admissions
1

Hey all,
I was scoring well last year on the SSAT Math Section, but getting all the Geometry questions wrong since I had not taken it yet. So, I’m thinking much of that problem will resolve itself given I’ve now taken the course. And a bit of review will close the finishing gap.

Reading is also not too much of an issue–I just needed to get used to SSAT-Style questions.

Verbal, however, was murder. This year, I’ve been focusing solely on Vocab for the first 2 months of studying. I went through three different prep books (Ivy, Princeton, & SSAT Prep) and took all the words I did not know. I have actually done quite well at learning most of them, and my Synonyms part of the test has seen a drastic jump! However, I cannot for the life of me get the analogies down.

It’s always either:

  1. I don’t have enough time
  2. I don’t know enough of the words in the question/answer choices
  3. It seems like multiple answer choices are correct
  4. My “bridge word” is not concise enough, and thus causes problem 3

If anybody can offer some advice/resources/out-of-the-box methods, it would be greatly appreciated!

I have read through other posts, forums, and tons of resources, but none of them seem to truly click.

Thanks, guys, good luck to everyone this year!

2

Hi! I’ve been studying for my SSAT too- the best thing I can say is to either make/find a Quizlet or notecards to study the vocabulary words so you cover your bases in the analogies. There are some good YouTube videos and a nice PDF on IvyGlobal for strategies for analogies- I think the thing that’s helped me most is just studying vocab, though.

3

@CavsFan2003 Most of the time, I know the words. But I just can’t solve the damn analogy. I’ll check those out though, thanks!

4

I’ve found that it works best for me to simply zoom through the vocab part of the verbal section, and then spend as much time as possible on the analogies. Bridge words/phrases are pretty much how I go about solving them, so maybe just focusing on refining those will help.

5

@willmo Yeah, I get that… I typically do that. I ALWAYS have extra time on the Verbal part. I usually finish with like at least 10 minutes left, and that’s after an extended amount of time on the Analogies. I just usually end up getting frustrated and giving up. Honestly, I think exclusively on the Verbal, it may be beneficial to guess a lot as opposed to leaving half of them blank. Obviously not ones where I have 0 clues. But if I can get it down to 3 choices, then whatever.